Student blog: The Future of PR and Your Role in It

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By Mwenge Ibrahim Lukombe, student at University of Johannesburg, South Africa.

The future of public relations will not be shaped by technology alone. But to understand where the profession is going, we should also be careful not to speak of “African wisdom” as though Africa represents a single cultural tradition. The continent contains distinct societies, languages and ways of understanding relationships, communication and community. As someone from the Democratic Republic of Congo, one philosophy I find particularly relevant is Bumuntu, rooted in the Luba tradition. At its heart is the idea of authentic personhood: that humanity is demonstrated through the way we think about, speak to and act towards others, with dignity, compassion and responsibility.

Bumuntu has clear parallels with Ubuntu, the Southern African philosophy commonly associated with our humanity being realised through our relationships with others. These traditions are not interchangeable, nor do they represent every African society, but together they offer a useful lens for public relations. They remind us that communication is not simply about transmitting information. It is about relationships, recognition and responsibility. In Luba culture, for example, the kasala tradition of oral praise poetry has long been used to express identity, values and collective memory. Communication, in this context, does more than inform. It helps communities understand who they are and what they value.

Today, public relations is practised in an era of permacrisis. Economic instability, political tension, climate change, misinformation, and rapidly shifting public expectations have made the profession increasingly unpredictable. In this environment, intuition alone is no longer enough. Practitioners need data-informed insights to understand audiences, anticipate risks and design communication strategies around real needs. But data cannot interpret culture for us. It still requires human judgement to understand why people behave as they do, what matters within a particular community and how communication might be received.

This becomes even more important as artificial intelligence transforms the profession. AI will increasingly monitor conversations, generate content, analyse sentiment and help predict stakeholder behaviour. It will make much of our work faster, more efficient and more sophisticated. But greater technological sophistication does not automatically create greater human resonance. As technology becomes more capable, our ability to understand people deeply becomes more valuable. The differentiator will increasingly be our cultural intelligence, empathy, curiosity and ability to make people feel seen rather than simply targeted.

My role as a PR practitioner, therefore, is not to compete with machines on speed or scale. It is to develop the human capabilities that technology cannot fully replicate, while learning to use that technology intelligently.

By applying first-principles thinking, I want to look beyond surface-level communication problems, understand their root causes and create measurable solutions grounded in the realities of the people they are intended to serve.

Perhaps Bumuntu offers a useful standard for that future: good thought, good speech and good action. Combined with the relational thinking found in Ubuntu, the possibilities of data and AI, and a deeper understanding of specific cultures and communities, it points towards a form of public relations that is technologically capable without losing its humanity. The future of PR will not belong to those who simply adopt the newest tools. It will belong to those who know what technology is for, who it is serving and how to use it to build genuine trust.

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